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This paper aims to examine empirically whether and under what organisational design conditions retailers can benefit from private label (PL) merchandising improvement.

The study tests hypotheses using a structural equation model and data obtained from general merchandise managers at 190 supermarket retailers in Japan.

The results reveal that both centralised merchandising authority and store cooperation between merchandising and store divisions motivate PL merchandising improvement, which strengthens PL competitiveness. In addition, outcome-based merchandiser control strengthens the positive relationship between store cooperation and PL merchandising improvement. However, regarding centralised merchandising authority, it is found that outcome-based control had no significant moderating effect.

To generalise the findings, it may be desirable to reflect data from store divisions for at least two constructs of interdepartmental structure and coordination. Also, it will remain a challenge to produce objective financial outcomes, such as sales, profits or market share, of PL merchandise to empirically test PL contributions to a retail store or company.

It is important for retail managers to understand their merchandisers’ efforts and behaviours to continuously improve PL merchandising activities. It is strongly recommended that retail managers continue to find ways to motivate their merchandisers.

Drawing on the philosophy of continuous improvement, this study suggests a novel approach to retail merchandising management that investigates how organisational design can influence better PL merchandising. To highlight the growing role of retail merchandisers, often ignored in the PL literature, this study advances this knowledge about the organisational design–strategic behaviour linkage by empirically testing interactions between different aspects of retail organisation design.

Describes the winning formula at Neiman Marcus that has made it the No. 1 luxury retailer in the United States in terms of sales per square foot and profitability. Highlights Neiman Marcus' efforts to define who its customers are and are not and to achieve superior focus on its customers by aligning location, price, service, and merchandise to fulfill these customers' every need. Describes ways in which Neiman Marcus prevents typical silo behavior between merchandising and selling and how it ensures that the right merchandise gets to the right customer, despite the challenge of doing this in 36 micromarkets.

To show how a company integrates two strong high-performance functions—merchandising and sales—to get the right merchandise to each customer in more than 30 diverse selling locations while consistently providing exceptional customer service.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of three virtual fashion stores using product display methods dominant by colour, visual texture and style coordination on consumers' retailer interest, retail pleasure, perception of merchandise quality, patronage intention, and purchase behaviour to provide empirically tested, actionable product display methods to visual merchandising researchers and practitioners.

The authors used mixed methods for this exploratory study, combining experimental and focus group methods to gather data. For the experiment, data were collected via a between-subjects design reflecting manipulation of three variables (i.e. colour, style coordination, visual texture). After the experiment, participants completed a self-administered online questionnaire. A segment of the participants also participated in focus group discussions of the virtual stores.

Participants who shopped in the style coordination store spent significantly more money than those who shopped in colour or visual texture stores. Participants who shopped in the colour store experienced significantly more retail pleasure and showed significantly higher patronage intention than those who shopped in the visual texture and style coordination stores; and they showed more retailer interest than subjects in the visual texture store. Retail pleasure and interest were found to mediate the link between methods of product display and patronage intention. Participants' fashion involvement moderated the relationship between fashion product display methods and retail interest.

This research is one of the first to create three virtual stores featuring product display methods dominant by colour, visual texture, and style coordination using 3D technology – a Mockshop software package. The effect of these different display methods on shoppers' reactions and responses was tested, which provided actionable results for visual merchandising practitioners, not only in the physical but also in the virtual store environment.

Retailers are rapidly coming to realise that sales lost through stock unavailability is a serious profit risk. Having the right merchandise to hand at the right time is a problem, especially in these times of shortages. In this article the merchandising methods of two hypothetical American stores, Alpha and Beta are discussed.

Revisits the strategic resource management (SRM) model, a framework that was developed 20 years ago as a managerial tool for performance measurement and integrated decision making in retailing. Shows certain modifications to the SRM model, focusing on the gross and net margin return on retail space (i.e. GMROF and NMROF) as the key metrics. Authors contend the new focus gives the SRM framework a firmer grounding conceptually, and makes the SRM model more directional in practice. The paper also extends the SRM framework from its traditional gross margin metrics to net margin. Authors believe the greatest benefits of the SRM framework continue to be in benchmarking, planning, and executing alternative inventory, space, and people strategies in an integrative fashion.

The purchase drivers of merchandise sales rank in professional sport are examined at both a conceptual and an empirical level. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A database was constructed for all 30 clubs in the National Hockey League based on a conceptual model of relevant variables. Both public and private data sources were accessed, covering an extensive 12-season period (1999-2011), including the 2004-2005 lockout when the season was cancelled. Principal-components analysis was used to reduce the number of variables for regression analysis to distinguish relatedness and to gauge the influence of those variables on merchandise sales rank.

The results reveal that six club-based factors impact merchandise sales rank: Overall Fan Satisfaction, Media Exposure, On-Field Performance, Strength of a Club’s Brand, Local Market Dynamics, and Fan Capacity to Pay. These six categories of purchase drivers form a strong predictive model of merchandise sales rank in the National Hockey League.

The resulting model could be extended in future research by adding extra categories to the conceptual framework and by developing alternative or better measures of the variables the authors use. It could also be tested with other sales data as the dependent variable since the study was limited to ranking data on merchandise data for the National Hockey League clubs for each year. Future research could use the actual merchandise dollars for each club in a league to test the model. A further extension would be to model subparts of merchandise (such as jersey sales, impacts of brand changes, etc.). A similar area of future research would be to look at the role of individual athletes as opposed to clubs in driving merchandise sales rank or volume.

For managers in professional sport, the results suggest that there are steps that can be taken to improve merchandise sales rank (and, by extension, merchandise sales volume). Practitioners can develop and follow strategies in this regard. Results also suggest that practitioners should put the achievement of high Regional Television Ratings – the strongest influencing variable on merchandise sales rank – as a priority.

The results confirm that brand is important when attempting to increase merchandise sales rank. Club managers need to be cognizant of their brand and its impact on merchandising in all decisions.

The business of professional sport is evolving globally with new sources of revenue, including merchandising increasing in prominence. This research explores the drivers of merchandise sales rank in professional sport and provide direction on key antecedents. The study proposes and tests a conceptual model.

The primary purpose of this study is to examine how fan attendance at team special events and player appearances impact fan consumption (as measured by merchandise sales). Insights obtained could shed light on opportunities for professional soccer teams to expand revenues through enhanced fan consumption of goods and services.

A sample of 499 season ticket holders were used to assess fan consumption by measuring merchandise sales. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions were run for merchandise sales as the dependent variable of fan consumption. The control variables were age, gender (male = 1, 0 otherwise), and whether an individual has children.

The key independent variables of attending special events and fan–player bonding were both found to have a statistically significant impact on merchandise sales. Results show that each additional special event attended generates up to $33.71 in merchandise sales for the club. Similarly, each fan–player bonding experience attended also has a direct impact, increasing merchandise consumption by $23.00.

The results of this study provide insights that can help fan consumption grow within the professional United States soccer industry and better allow team managers to make decisions about the possible benefits of holding more special events and fan–player bonding experiences. The findings also confirm the impact personal relationships with fans can have on the bottom line of sport franchises.

Though this study adds to the body of literature by expanding previous work on fan consumption, there are limited studies on the social aspects of consumption which are examined and analyzed within this study, particularly of note is the study of merchandise sales as proxy for fan consumption.

The relevance of merchandise for professional football clubs is uncontroversial. Especially the constantly growing e-commerce sales elicits disruptive market changes such as global brand visibility or data-driven customer relationship management strategies. To exhaust these possibilities, it is a precondition that merchandising costumers choose the official online fan shop as the first choice channel instead of a third-party supplier. Thus, the purpose of this study is to figure out if the club as a retailer and the loyalty to a club influence the fans' channel choice when purchasing licensed sports merchandise online.

To do so, a choice-based conjoint analysis for a jersey purchase embedded in an online questionnaire was conducted (sample: n = 589) to investigate the importance of the online supplier, relative to the tangible factors price, shipping speed and free added values and the influence of fan loyalty within the e-commerce purchase channel choice.

The findings reveal that the price has the highest relative importance (47%), but, as a sport specific peculiarity, the relative importance of the online supplier (22%) is higher than added values (20%) and shipping speed (11%). But, these overall findings are significantly affected by the level of fan loyalty. Based on the findings, implications that influence the fans' decision-making practices are derived for clubs.

This study is the one of the first in sports management research, focusing straight on the purchase channel importance (affected by fan loyalty) when purchasing merchandising online.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the growing trend of the use of private labeling as a competitive strategy among fashion retailers. Specifically, how retailers differentiate and create niche markets within their own private label merchandise is examined. The study focuses on how retailers develop and expand their private label portfolios, while minimizing the risk of cannibalization.

The research methodology is an in‐depth case study design that is used to gather information from a selected sample of those retailers that participate in apparel private label product development.

Results indicate a strong use of a niche marketing strategy by retailers in the development and implementation phase of private labels. The strategy resulted in increased profits and market share.

The study is significant because it provides a framework for a globally competitive strategy that retailers can utilize in order to develop specialized, niche markets within their private label merchandise, while minimizing the risk of cannibalization.

There is a void in the current research literature relative to the use of a niche market strategy as a competitive strategy by the fashion retail industry, particularly when related to the development and marketing of private label merchandise.